I’m in love. The last time I felt this passionate about a few thousand lines of code it was for our favorite online project management software: Basecamp.
The new object of my affection? Yugma. (With a name like Yugma it’s gotta be good, right?)
One of the frustrations in working on a Mac is the lack of a WebEx or GoToMyPC/Meeting type application. Sure, you can view one of these presentations on a Mac, but you can’t present on a Mac. Luckily, I recently found Yugma.
With Yugma I can do Web conferencing, real-time collaboration, and online presentations. I can share my desktop with a client to do training, and then swap presenters so that I can watch them on their desktop to see what problems they’re running into.
There’s a built-in whiteboard (or transparent-board) so that I can mock up something on top of my desktop and share it. There’s also free (although not toll-free unless you’re in Duluth) teleconferencing on top of that. It works not just with Mac, but with Windows and even Linux. Oh, and did I mention it’s FREE?!?
Sure, there’s a paid version, and I may upgrade to it shortly, but the free version rocks! It may not have all the bells and whistles of a WebEx, but what it does it does phenomenally.
We originally starting looking for a Yugma so that we could do "real-time" updates for clients who wanted to look over our shoulder while we worked. (This does bring up the, "it’s $50/hr if we do it, $75/hr if you watch, and $100/hr if you help conundrum, but for some clients it will speed up the process of their updates.)
Although we haven’t used it for that yet, I’ve already put on several blog consulting sessions with some of our clients. The other day, one client who’s down in Kennebunk, Maine, saved 90 minutes of driving time, plus gas and the cost of parking in the Old Port. His investment: 2 minutes in downloading the software.
It also opens us up for putting on some of our Web marketing seminars virtually; no longer will you have to come up to Vacationland, enjoy a delicious lunch and stroll about the Old Port to learn about business blogging, email marketing, or search engine optimization. I’ll be able to put on my presentation, share my desktop, and then have time for Q&A. It will be a BYOL affair. (Bring Your Own Lunch.) Stay tuned for more on that; I plan on having a beta launch of this soon to work out the bugs.
For the small business owner or entrepreneur, you have to give Yugma a look in this "The World is Flat" world we live in. Whether you use their teleconferencing service, call a client direct, or set up a Skype conference to lay on top of a Yugma session, the opportunities to grow you business are mind-boggling.
I’ve also added it to my Entrepreneurial Web Tools (check out the left hand column of our blog for the full list.)
